1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display devices.
2. Description of Related Art
A liquid crystal display (“LCD”) device includes upper and lower panels provided with field-generating electrodes thereon, a liquid crystal layer interposed therebetween, a pair of a polarizer and an analyzer, compensation films, etc. The LCD generates electric field in the liquid crystal layer by applying electric voltages to the field-generating electrodes and adjusts the intensity of the electric field to control the transmittance of light passing through the liquid crystal layer, thereby displaying desired images.
One of the most widely used types of LCD has a common electrode and a plurality of pixel electrodes provided on respective panels and a plurality of thin film transistors (“TFT”) for switching voltages applied to the pixel electrodes, which is provided on the panel having the pixel electrodes.
LCDs may operate in one of several modes. An LCD operating in a vertically-aligned (“VA”) mode contains liquid crystal molecules aligned perpendicular to two panels. VA-mode LCDs are sometimes preferred for their high contrast ratio and wide viewing angle.
LCDs often suffer from light leakage, the severity of which increases with viewing angle. The light leakage, which causes poor visibility from the sides and a narrow viewing angle, is caused by variations in light path and in the effective angle made by the polarizer and the analyzer depending on the viewing directions.
Compensation films are sometimes used to neutralize the effect of these variations. However, use of compensation films usually significantly increases the cost of the LCD because they are expensive and there is no efficient way to select the compensation film that yields optimal results. A method of determining the optimal parameters of a compensation film without the costly trial-and-error process is needed in order to allow more LCD applications to take advantage of compensation films.